News

HB4735

Donald Thomas

Agora

 

A recent bill has passed that threatens the future of MCCC!

The legislation in question is HB 4735, an underwhelming name for such an important bill. This bill will do several things to disrupt the future of MCCC.

Kojo Quartey, the President of MCCC has emphasized how major of an impact this will have on his school.

“It’s misguided legislation, it’s legislation that may not have an impact on many institutions, but it will have an impact on us,” Quartey said. “There are four border high schools that we work Bedford, Whiteford, Erie Mason, and Summerfield that are all within our county. What this does, looking at those four school districts, it could mean upward of 300 students we could lose, that’s 10% of our enrollment because of this misguide legislation.”

As Quartey has implied this bill will allow high school students from Michigan to be able to dual enroll in out of state colleges for in state rates. To do so students will only need to live on the border and either not have access to the class an out of state college has or the class itself is cheaper.

“Dual enrollment has been our only area of growth, we have other institutions now that have been giving lunch to come in and teach these course at any of these four institutions,” Quartey said. “It threatens the only area of growth that we have had in the last five years, that’s what this legislation does. The number of adult students they are going off to work and with the economy, dual enrollment has been the only area of growth that we have had in the last five years and this is very similar to other institutions across the state. It’s taking state money out of state institutions to pay other schools to come in out of state and teach the courses that we were teaching at a lower price.”

One college has already smelled the blood in the water caused by this legislation.

“From what I have understand now Lorde’s college is already teaching classes at Summerfield,” Quartey said. “This legislation has facilitated another college coming across the border to eat our lunch, already. We had a meeting with Whiteford and Erie-Mason and Lorde’s college wants to come into their institutions also to teach the classes that we are teaching at a lower cost.”

There is only one way that Quartey has suggested he can hope to counter this and future actions by out of state institutions.

“We are also a quality institution. We can only try to counter it by being as competitive as we can be,” Quartey said. “So, I’m going to be talking to my board and the superintendents of those institutions to see how we can better serve the kids from those institutions. Possibly Owens and UT could come in and do what Lorde’s college is already doing, they are already here and having conversations with those other institutions.

Keeping this in mind Quartey asks himself the question: how do we minimize the impact of this misguide legislation? The answers he has come up with are his hope to help restore the future of MCCC.

“In the long term our tuition is much more affordable than those other institutions as they may provide them a cheaper price for a few of their classes, but they will then double or quintuple the amount when they go there,” Quartey said. “So, it’s not all about price competition.”

Instead Quartey has expressed that MCCC should focus on quality and the relationships that they already have with schools.